Manus AI to resume standalone operations after Meta acquisition collapses

Manus AI, the Chinese startup behind one of the most prominent “general agent” products, told users it will soon return to operating as an independent company, confirming that Meta's attempt to acquire it has fallen apart. The Register reported the notice, which opens with the line “Manus will soon return to operating as an independent company.”

Manus burst onto the AI scene in March 2025 with a general agent that let users assign tasks to an AI. To illustrate its powers, Manus claimed it could evaluate job applications stored in a ZIP file by opening and reading them, assessing them against user-defined criteria, and writing a document ranking the best applicants — all inside a virtual PC that its agents drove without human help.

The service quickly gathered enthusiastic users and claimed to have hit a $100 million run rate. To fund the GPU purchases an AI company needs, Manus moved its official headquarters from China to investor-friendly Singapore.

In December 2025, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to acquire Manus, planning to use its technology across Meta's AI products. “Manus's exceptional talent will join Meta's team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI,” Meta said in its acquisition announcement.

Beijing had other ideas. Chinese regulators launched an investigation into the acquisition in early 2026, and by April they had decided to forbid foreign investment in Manus. Meta chose not to fight China over the matter and began disentangling itself from the startup.

That effort now appears near complete, but the separation is not painless: Manus says legal matters require it to delete some user data generated since December 29, 2025. The deletion happens on August 24; customers who download their data before then can restore it to Manus from August 25.

Meta has not said how or whether it will replace Manus's technology, or whether its brief time working with the Chinese company yielded what it needed for the superintelligence ambitions Zuckerberg described this week.

The episode underscores China's determination to keep control of local innovators rather than let them leave in search of foreign investment — even as Chinese companies use open-weight models to challenge American model makers.